Jumping Puzzles Come To WoW!

Jumping Puzzles are usually the premise of Guild Wars 2, but a quest has been found in the World of Warcraft Patch 5.2 PTR which includes them.

This quest is found on the new island, Thunder Isle, and is part of a quest chain which is, presumably, the daily quest chains required for each faction to take control of Thunder Isle and spawn the world boss, Nalak the Storm Rider. Squishei sent us the following image via twitter, which is clearly not the final quest text, but definitely suggests pretty strongly that some kind of jumping puzzle is involved! Squishei went in search of the jumping puzzle, and anyone who was paying attention will likely have already recalled one particular room from the preview trailer of Patch 5.2, which had a floor covered in square-topped pillars. There was a chest beyond it containing a reward, which implies that getting across the room is the key, but if compared to the Guild Wars 2 jumping puzzles, it’s pretty simplistic, unless, of course, the pillars move.

What do you think about this? Is WoW going a step too far taking jumping puzzles into its own game? Jumping and co-ordination have never really been an element of WoW, although they have featured lightly in some raids, such as Nefarian‘s pillars in blackwing descent, or the infamous jump in blackfathom deeps. Neither of these could really be considered jumping puzzles, and certainly, neither of them are anything like the ones found in Guild Wars 2. They’re far less complex, and usually simply involve jumping onto a pillar or similar, but have definitely caused a fair few raid deaths and dungeon rage quits!

This raises some interesting questions. Will the average WoW player have it in them to do jumping puzzles? Will the WoW Development team have to make the jumping puzzles more straightforward for an audience that aren’t used to them? Will Guild Wars 2 players be drawn to WoW thanks to the increasing inclusion of Guild Wars styled content?